Officials provide more information on the mass shooting that left 8 teens hurt

all right good afternoon everyone I'm Sergeant Eric gri I'm the public information officer for the Philadelphia Police Department we're out here on the 7300 block of Rising Sun Avenue to talk about a mass shooting which happened shortly before 3:00 2:59 uh we're going to hear today from our mayor Charelle Parker going to be followed by the superintendent of school district of Philadelphia Dr watlington going hear from our Police Commissioner Kevin bethl chief of SEPTA police chief Lawson then we

're going to hear from our district attorney Larry ker I just ask that you hold all of your questions until the end till our last speaker has gone Madame mayor thank you good evening uh Philadelphia over the past two days we have seen 11 juveniles shot over the past few days we have seen these senseless acts of gun violence occur in and around schools and public Transportation mass transit septer the purpose of our being here on today is to inform you all that enough is enough that every law enf

orcement partner that we have here in the city of Philadelphia is actively engaged in working together to ensure that every resource that is needed is readily available so that the work can be done to solve the crimes now this is what's extremely important to me as mayor of this city that the people of this city know that we will not be held hostage that we will use every legal tool in the toolbox to ensure the public health and safety of the people of our city we know that we have to ensure tha

t we have access to economic opportunities quality public education yearr round opportunities out of school time opportunities and we're going to work on that this simply further strengthens our resolve to get this done but we are going to ensure that every partner that we have every resource that we need to solve this crime to ensure that those who are responsible are held accountable we're going to make sure that we do that but I want philadelphians to know that on our streets and you're going

to hear from our Police Commissioner uh he will give you details about the Philadelphia Police Department's role but you need to know that we are going to do everything that we can to ensure your public health and safety and we don't apologize for using every legal and constitutional tool in our tool belts in order to get that done today you're going to notice when I say Partners I'm referring to our school district District of Philadelphia I'm referring to our Police Department the ATF is here

sepa uh is here our office of emergency management our managing director our public safety director and our district attorney everyone is here tonight this further strengthens our resolve and the need and the sense of urgency Regarding why we have to work together to ensure one that anyone held accountable anyone held accountable we make sure we let you know that we have worked together in a unified way to ensure that that is what occurs but we want no one in the city of Philadelphia concerned

about whether or not they can come out and go to the store go to the supermarket we don't want you feeling captive in your homes and our Police Commissioner is going to talk to you about what our public uh safety actions formally will be uh as a result of this all thank you uh so very much we're now going to hear from my school superintendent won uh thank you mayor uh on behalf of our all of our children and families in the school district uh we are just absolutely heartbroken and uh Angry uh th

at innocent children walking home from school would be impacted by by gun violence and we agree with the mayor enough is enough uh our parents and students are working so hard in the school district of Philadelphia to improve outcomes and uh uh just so happy that the mayor and the team is here together to stand in unison uh certainly uh we will have uh trained uh crisis professionals at the uh Northeast High School tomorrow uh to provide support to our students and families uh as they process th

is horrific uh unconscious unconscionable uh uh act of violence again uh we're going to do everything to work with the mayor under the mayor's leadership with uh commissioner Beth bethl uh and all the partners here in the city because we absolutely are committed to improving outcomes for our young people and make sure that they're safe and that when parents send their children to school uh they can expect them to return safely to them and so uh thank you mayor we look forward to working in Partn

ership thank you police commission so so so today uh at 300 p.m. around 3 p.m. uh in the 7200 Rising Sun Avenue uh we have juveniles or students from Northeast High School who are waiting for the bus across the street we do we see as part based on the video evidence we have so far we see a car that's parked along the side of that of the store of the of the Dunkin Donuts at some point when the bus is pulling up and the kids are converging get on the bus three individuals exit that vehicle and the

n and and the chares multiple times at least over 30 times they fire into the kids that are getting onto the bus as a result of those that gunfire we now have eight students who have been shot uh r in ag from 15 to 17 years of age uh one of the kids is in critical condition he was shot multiple times uh this is an ongoing and active investigation I Echo the words of the mayor and it's hard to sit here and see in 3 days that I have 11 year 11 juvenile shot who are going and coming from school the

cly acts that we've seen over the last 3 days are unacceptable the fact that we we have this situation where I've talked about it multiple times the downstream impact we do not address gun violence and we do not address guns is what we see the death you know and we are going to take all for a press hard each and every day to deal with this issues the mayor outlined as a result of what we've seen over the last three days we're going to be ramping up our resources significantly I want parents and

families to know that we're going to be along our Carters across the entire city of Philadelphia until we can figure out exactly what's going on this situation whether it's linked to the situation on Monday or what do we need to do more moving forward but we working with ch Loston in that effort but we will do everything in our power to bring those individuals who are responsible for this shooting today as well as Monday and any of the shootings that we have to justice but we cannot ignore what

we're seeing over the last three days I will not sit here and people call me and tell me what I should or should not be doing this is what we see when we give guns in the hands of juveniles and don't and what they do with them telling kids that they should not you carry guns cuz they're scared really this is an end result of what we see you know so we are going to work hard and we're going to continue with the men and women behind me and my team uh to get these guns off the street and stop this

from happening I'm passing out over to I think [Music] law evening ladies and gentlemen obviously I had a a larger press release earlier today I will let those comments stand on their own but much of what I said stands and you're seeing the effort of that now we talk talked about strong Partnerships in this city we talked about the things that we're going to do together and you're seeing that right now we are attention at this time turning to how we can effectively please School dismissal the i

nflux of school kids for the remainder this week and we're working closely with Chief Beth commissioner bethl staff to be able to do that that's all I have at this time I'm good obviously this is a horrifying event I want you to imagine for a moment a parent receiving a call saying your child is in the hospital your child's been shot we don't know the condition I want you to imagine a parent waiting for the child to come home from school and that parent hears that something happened at the bus s

top where this child is going to wait this does not just kill and harm the people who were struck with the bullets this is a devastating disabling horrifying event for every child who was out here every child who goes to that school every parent whose child goes to that school every person who rides public transit and a city lives by its schools and it lives by its public transit I want you to know that we are all here united we are all here together we have been and will continue to be working

together vigorously I know that with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department's excellent detectives with the help of ATF with the available help of FBI with the help of the gun violence task force in my office we will catch the people who did this we will hold those people in custody we will charge them and we will vigorously prosecute them and we will give them the consequences that they absolutely deserve for this devastating and horrifying Act Comm can you just talk to what parents may

be I mean obviously parents and you had worked in the school district before but parents are obviously not only frightened but some of them may also be not thinking my kid couldn't possibly be involved in this what would your advice be to parents or families uh now that we have so many kids shot in so many days you talking what parent you're talking about parents or both sides well I mean there's obviously there's two fs and that's been described here I mean the reality that the the trauma that

inflicted on our young children today who have been shot in the in the school Community is significant you know this has been a continuation of violence that we saw last year at our schools and we thought you know we had worked diligently and worked hard with the with the school district at the time I was there and even now with with Chief Craig Johnson to really work in those areas and we thought uh that so it is very traumatic for famili today I've said this before I'm a graduate of John bsam

high school going to high school was the safest place I could ever imagine going I never ever thought that anyone would shoot me walking to school or kill me at the doorstep of a school or let alone getting on the bus two blocks down so for those parents and those children yeah it's very traumatic and I know the school district and Dr wison will be deploying their teams to be able to deal with those issues as they always do for the shooters I mean they come from their parents need to get engaged

we said this multiple times I asked every parent today go in those rooms and look under those tables and look under those in those closets and get those guns out of the house right because at the end of the day many of these kids are coming from the same communities over there're shooting in right and they know who they are and the community knows they are we can't do this by ourself like we need the community we need parents to get engaged and engaged what their young people are doing they're

looking at drill rap they're looking at TV they're they're doing all these things and on putting them themselves on social media and then getting fired up and engaged and then come out here and shoot small beasts small beasts on social media you said something wrong you looked at me wrong and now we're having young people out here taking in their hands and putting guns in their hands and killing people yesterday we had a gun with a trigger on a trigger uh mechanism on it fully automatic I mean a

ble to fire multiple rounds in seconds that's not acceptable mayor mayor can I ask you like you are going to wonder do I send my kid to school they're going to be scared they're going to say let me just let him learn virally because I'm afraid for him at a bus stop what kind of message do you have for those moms like yourself with a kid relative to the scheduling I'm going to ask our superintendent uh to address the scheduling portion uh AB absolutely um we know that kids learn more if we didn't

learn anything else from the pandemic is that kids most of them learn more with in-person instruction than in remote learning so it's so important that we work together to win this world done violence so that kids can be in school but a lot of moms and guys are going to be like they're not going to learn anything when they're shot in the hospital or they're dead absolutely we're going to be very sympathetic we're going to be very understanding of parents positions I'm a father of three young me

n myself who were in public schools and uh to the extent possibly we want students to be in school and to be safe mayor mayor I mayor let me just go back to your question particularly as it relates to the two schools in question Northeast um uh school and M hotep parents of of children who attend those School schools should get specific uh they will get Specific Instructions from them on exactly uh what the operating procedure will be at both of those location but as it relates to going to schoo

l and going to work tomorrow um I have the full confidence of our our our Police Commissioner and every partner that you heard me reference uh here today that we are working together to ensure that your travel to and from whether or not that's school that's to work to the doctor's office to the supermarket we're going to be doing everything that we possibly can together um is the key to ensure the safety of our streets and and and our very valuable partner with SEPTA um it's extremely important

that that they be front and center here uh with us on today because this is very much a collaborative approach mayor may I just want to ask you about you said everything under the law or everything you're going to use to combat this stopping Frisk is that something that you that you want is this is this the moment is this the moment in time to talk about that no I was literally is this the moment in time like we're talking about the work we need to do to to deal with the issues we have we have 1

1 children shot today this is not about stopping fris this is not about that right now this about what we're going to do as a city to address the violence that we're seeing now I'm not cutting you off I get it I was just responding to her comments so we're going to end it here I think it's time for us that we have work to do we have a lot of work to do we got to get back and deal with these kids that we have to deal with and and our team will be following up with you thank you everyone we apprec

iate all of your you coming out